Petunia Window Boxes

Fingers crossed I won't kill them this year. We also anchored the window boxes better so they won't get blown off the ledge and smash into our landlord's yard like last year. Thank GOD she still renewed our lease!

D.I.Y. Wedding Wednesday: Summer Wedding Decor

While I'm still at work on our D.I.Y. wedding creations, I wanted to share some awesome design from some friends' recent nuptials. Above is a photo I stole from Facebook from my friend Valerie's backyard wedding. How cute are her "I'm a Fan of Valerie & Matt" fans?



Last month we escaped upstate for our friends' Hillary & Dan's Catskills wedding. Everything from the Save the Dates to the signature cocktails were perfectly coordinated hues of pink with brown and green accents. Hillary and our friends made dozens of tissue paper flowers which adored every corner of the venue (a Dirty Dancing-esque Ukrainian summer camp!), they glued fortunes on old timey soda straws plus many other creative touches that made for a very beautiful, personalized celebration.







Our talented friend Melissa, aka Cake Hero, outdid herself with a delicious collection of flower-topped wedding cakes.



Less than three months to our wedding, my decor planning -- and better yet, my SHOPPING -- is is full swing. I ordered a shipment of feathers and vases from Save-On-Crafts, an online wonderland of wedding D.I.Y. Of course I somehow shattered one of three 20" vases as I was unpacking it, but the fine people at Save-On-Crafts graciously agreed to send a replacement. I've also been making trips to the wholesale floral district for arm loads of willow branches (which I carried on my head back to my office where they are currently making my cubicle a willowy jungle) and taking lunch breaks at Paper Presentation to hem and haw over thank you cards and decorative paper from the scrapbooking section. Oh how Martha Stewart I could get on this wedding if I only had a little more time, budget and patience with pinking shears and glue sticks.

I got bridal-showered by friends and family in Chicago, which was a truly lovely event. I received about two suitcases worth of bath towels, steak knives, an iron skillet and a stone mortar and pestle, amongst other things. Needless to say, getting back on the plane was a challenge. I'm also the idiot who thought to put an ironing board on our registry, not considering how someone would manage to gift wrap it, let alone tote it to or from a shower or wedding. Nevertheless, I'm psyched to finally have a proper surface on which to iron. I might actually have to start ironing (crap!).

Next D.I.Y. wedding project? Invites designed my Mr. Homewrecker! Lots of gluing and envelope licking in our near future...

A Rose for Don Corleone

Ok, I'm a day behind on "DIY Wedding Wednesday," but I've been busy packing up the apartment for another move. It will be the 4th home in as many years, but this time we're really planning to settle in, getting married and all. Count on some HSW decor updates soon.

But for now, I'm back with another wedding planning post. I've been exploring the options for DIY wedding bouquets and flower arrangements, and wanted to share some advice and resources.

As you may know, NYC has no shortage of fresh flowers for sale at on almost every block at corner bodegas and neighborhood markets. We even have a wholesale flower district as one user on on the Brownstoner forum tells us: "There are still a few flower markets left in 27th & 28th street between 6th and 7th ave in Manhattan - good deals for bulk." Another user offers advice on hydrangeas, my wedding flower of choice, "to keep hydrangea going for more than 12 hours, you have to smash the stem when you get them home. take a hammer or something heavy and smash the stem. they need that much water. next day, cut and repeat. keep in fridge overnight helps too." Good to know if you are going the DIY route.

My fav wedding craft and decor site Save-On-Crafts has several guides on how to make your own bouquets plus all the supplies you'll need: satin ribbon, floral tape, corsage pins, etc.

After poking around on wedding forums like Indiebride.com, it sounds like mail-order bulk flowers are a good option for the crafty bride too. I have scoped out a couple like fiftyflowers.com and rosesource.com and I think this might be the way to go. No need to run an errand to the flower district -- the flowers come to you!

Has anyone out there tried mail-order bulk flowers before? Let me know your experiences and recommendations. I think I'm going to be going with Rose Source based on customer reviews, their prices and the fact that they can ship the exact pale yellow rose my husband-to-be is requesting. It's hilarious to me the wedding things he decides to have a strong opinion on. Like, I didn't think boutonnieres would be one, but he got this idea that he wants to look just like Don Corleone on the day of his daughter's wedding with a single rose on his lapel which he can sniff dramatically. Only the rose will be yellow, not red, because that's the color he chose for our wedding palate when he got a bee in his bonnet about wanting a pale yellow necktie. What a weirdo, I'm so psyched to be marrying him!



Finally, I wanted to share this great group of images I found on RuffledBlog.com showing single stem flowers on display in all variety of vintage bottles and vases. Those yellow roses will look beautiful in the bottles I've been collecting, like in the photo on the lower right.



To order your wholesale flowers -- from Alstroemeria to Zinnia (ok, not zinnia, but tulips, yes they have tulips) -- click here to visit Rose Source:

DIY Wedding Wednesday: Flowers and Floorplans

There's just SO much to do before the wedding this October, I thought it would be best if I broke down the to-do list by month, and if nothing else, at least got one wedding thing done every Wednesday.

Truth is I got a few things done this week including procuring a floor plan of the loft space where we're having our reception and tracking down the bride having her wedding there the day after ours. I figured if we both need to rent a hundred chairs and tables and votive holders etc etc etc, maybe we can save a few bucks by sharing some items. She was thrilled I contacted her. My thriftiness is so catchy.

Since today is my newly dubbed "Wedding Wednesday" (not to be confused with "Tecate Tuesdays" at the office), I went to the fancy deli on my lunch break and picked up some pale blue hydrangeas and baby's breath so I could start toying with floral arrangements.



In my opinion, floral arrangements are one of the biggest rip offs when it comes to weddings. If you have even a slight knack for design, or if you are able to mimic photos of bouquets you like, you can make your own bouquets and arrangements. It's not like sewing your own dress or baking your own cake. Flowers are already pretty; all you have to do is group them. Granted the DIY approach is best if you are going for something simple or for an earthy wildflower look. I don't want to totally discount the talents of a skilled florist.

That said, you also don't want to be fussing with flowers the day before your wedding and find out you're going about it all wrong. Practice. Also that's not my finished arrangement above on the left, that's just flowers in a vase. I'll practice making them look like the Real Simple photo on the right later, but first, I wanted to start playing with this...



Last weekend I attended the Brooklyn Based Wedding Crashers fair where I got buzzed on free Prosecco (Italy's more affordable answer to Champagne), stuffed my face with canapes and met with a couple dozen of Brooklyn's hippest wedding vendors. I'm not a girly girl in the traditional sense, but this event had just the right amount of quirk and class that it didn't take me long to start cooing over cupcakes and custom letterpress coasters. But I digress...

I got some really good ideas from the vendors at the fair, whether I'll be able to afford to pay them for their talents or if I'll attempt my own knock off in the end. One florist had a beautiful willow branch arrangement decorated with "crystal" beads and blue feathers (stealing that idea), vintage glass bottles with baby's breath (see my attempt above) and beautiful, simple hydrangea bouquets (I can do that). So that was the inspiration for today's Wedding Wednesday as well as this Style Me Pretty post I came across a few months ago.



I started collecting vintage glass bottles at the Brooklyn Flea and from awesome second-hand shop Junk when I saw that post. I figure I'll create groupings of three or four bottles with either baby's breath or single stem dahlias. No paper pom poms or anything with yarn though. This ain't gonna be a barn wedding, this is BROOKLYN.